Saturday, March 12, 2016

Iron Maiden’s plane, Ed Force One, has been damaged in an early Saturday morning incident at a Santiago, Chile airport.

The plane was tethered to a tow truck to be taken for refuelling prior to flying over the Andes to Cordoba Cordoba, Argentina for their March 13 concert at Estadio Mario Kempes.

On moving, the steering pin that is part of the mechanism that connects the ground tug to the aircraft seemingly fell out. On making a turn, the aircraft had no steering and collided with the ground tug, badly damaging the undercarriage, two of the aircrafts engines and injuring two ground tug operators, both of whom have been taken to hospital.

“The flight engineers are on site and evaluating the damage, but their initial report is that the engines have suffered large damage and will require an extended period of maintenance and possibly two new engines,” reports the band. “Fortunately the 20 tons of equipment had not been loaded onto EF1 at the time of the accident.

“To finish on a high note however, our visit to Chile was a huge success with 58,000 fans coming to the show as totally brilliant as ever in the Stadium Nacional last night. We love you guys!”

“We are happy to tell our fans in Cordoba that our Killer Krew has sorted out all logistics for us to be there with our full show for you all tomorrow,” says band manager Rod Smallwood. “We expect no disruption to the tour in any way and are looking for a replacement 747 Ed Force One while our current beauty is healed. More news on that later. Until then, believe me, we will get to you all on this tour one way or another wherever you are.

“We are also delighted to say that we have been officially informed that the two Chilean airport staff who were injured following the malfunction of the tow truck connecting bolt will make a complete recovery. Best wishes to them and their families.”

Piloted by singer Bruce Dickinson, Ed Force One carries the band, crew and gear around the world on their global tour – check out a video of the plane here.